The Bristol Blogger

That Liddell-Grainger speech in full:

Southwest One and IBM - Westminster Hall, 26th March 2008

11 am

Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater) (Con): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. Jones. I am very grateful for the chance to bring the subject of this debate before the House. I shall raise extremely urgent matters that involve the public interest and may have grave implications way beyond the county of Somerset. I believe that public money is being misappropriated and I fear—I do not mince my words—corruption.

My concern relates to the creation of a new company designed to take over important responsibilities from local authorities and others without any proper scrutiny or accountability. The company is called Southwest One. People will not find it listed in the Somerset telephone directory. It has not yet submitted any company reports. It describes itself as a joint venture exercise between two councils and the multinational computer giant IBM. Its registered address is IBM’s UK base in Portsmouth.

A joint venture implies a partnership, but this partnership is far from equal. It is my clear understanding that IBM will continue to own 81 per cent. of the operation. There are nine members of the interim board, seven of whom are high-powered IBM executives. The company did not get where it is today through charity. Last year, IBM turned over $98 billion and made a $10 billion profit, so where is the democratic balance in the new joint venture?

Did the two Somerset councils bring their sharpest business brains into the fray? Did they heck. In fact, there are only two potential defenders of the public interest on the board, but I am afraid that they are woefully inexperienced and gullible Liberal Democrat councillors. Their forensic ability to tackle a global concern such as IBM is severely limited. One of them is nominally in charge of Taunton’s car parks. The other strums in a Yeovil jazz band and, I am reliably informed, can sometimes get a tune out of a didgeridoo. Half a million council tax payers are now represented by two rank amateurs. That is a joke. Both would be baffled by a balance sheet. They are the patsies of this bizarre outfit. It is tacky tokenism in the name of accountability.

When dealing with the delivery of local council services, top-class accountability is vital. The Government know that and we know it. Do not take my word for it: the Audit Commission has real concerns about shared service partnerships such as Southwest One. In January, it published an important report that stated:

“Councils should only deliver services through SSPs if they are prepared to manage them effectively.”

Effective management ought to mean an awful lot more than two well meaning volunteers on the board of the organisation.

The Liberal Democrats run Somerset county council and Taunton Deane borough council. Their leaders pay lavish lip service to working for the people, but if their words were worth a row of beans, they would have stopped this nonsense—this madness—in its tracks. Already Southwest One has taken over the employment of 800 staff formerly on the payroll of Somerset county council and Taunton Deane borough council. Interestingly, the payslips for those employees still come from the councils, but their long-term employment rights are now stunningly vague. They have been “guaranteed” that their jobs are secure, but the small print of the guarantee—believe it or not—is not available for inspection, even if they knew what was going on.

Southwest One is an outfit born in secrecy and reliant on secrecy. Trade unionists who ask responsible questions are branded traitors. Joe Stalin would have been proud of the company. Southwest One is destined to gobble up more than £400 million of public money providing just two councils with services over the next 10 years.

The creators promised that the scheme would save a lot of money—£200 million, which is the equivalent of a £20 million cut from existing budgets every year. Last night, I was bombarded with documents from Somerset county council hoping to convince me of the savings. I read them all. They all mentioned the magic word “guarantee”, but it is all aspiration; it is not an explanation of what is going on. Somerset people are being asked to believe in fairies, and we do not. Painless savings cannot be made unless there are real economies of scale, and they certainly cannot be guaranteed. In other words, many public authorities need to be on board to justify the cost, and even then some brutal job cutting will be needed as well.

Assuming that the instigators of the scheme were not complete idiots, there had to be a viable plan to get several local authorities involved at once. There was: Somerset county council’s bid to become a giant unitary authority. Last year, the council appealed to the Government for permission to take over the responsibilities of five district councils. It was a half-baked and stupid idea. The sums had not been done. It was said that there could be a saving of £27 million and that only 65 jobs would be got rid of—lunacy. The plan would have left Somerset people democratically unrepresented at local level and created the most unwieldy local government monster.

The unitary plan was driven by one dangerous but very determined individual. His name is Alan Jones and he is the chief executive of Somerset county council. Rather like Joseph Stalin, he does not give a fig about democracy. He is, in his dreams at least, a ruthless business man—a pint-sized Alan Sugar. If his unitary plan had succeeded, the core business of Southwest One would have been ready made, and those involved would have been laughing all the way to the bank.

However, the Government’s civil servants took one look at Somerset’s proposals and rejected them out of hand. They made no sense economically or democratically. Suddenly, the rug was pulled from underneath and the new joint venture company was left struggling for clients and credibility. A desperate bid for extra business was launched. Devon county council was approached, and Cornwall too—let us spread our wings; let us march to the periphery. Both, as I understand it, gave Southwest One an instant, and correct, thumbs-down, goodbye, you are the weakest link.

We all knew that Southwest One could not survive, let alone prosper, with the work of a single county council and a tiddly little borough council. It needed richer, fatter clients and, what is more, it needed them fast. Last Thursday, Avon and Somerset police finally signed up to a contract to become the latest member of this strange secret society. Soon it will hand over to Southwest One much of the boring back-room work, such as financial services, human resources, information technology, facilities management, procurement and even inquiry offices.

The police do not like to be seen cracking open the Bollinger; it tends to give criminals the wrong idea. The thin blue line had fixed grins last Thursday, and no wonder. The forces of law and order had paid rock-bottom, bargain-basement prices to join Southwest One. Perhaps they were the sprat designed to catch the mackerel. It is said that IBM wanted to bag as much back-room police work as it could from all over the UK, but no one will get this “buy one, get one free” deal in the future. Somerset county council and Taunton Deane council will have to cough up £40 million a year to transfer 800 people to the Southwest One payroll. Avon and Somerset police has 600 back-room staff, but they are all coming in at half the price. The police contribution is so small that it amounts to a bribe. If the police were not already in it up to their necks, I would be demanding a police investigation.

How did it all start? We are assured that it was from the purest of motives. Somerset county council wanted to save money, so a few years back, it invented a project called “Improving services in Somerset” (ISIS). It was a lofty ideal that no one could disagree with. However, if one examined the small print, one would find that most of it was missing. ISIS appointed a project director on a two-year consultancy to help get things going. The appointment was made under what is known as the “urgency procedure”, so the individual was given the job without going through the council’s normal strict selection process. Only two people were involved, one of whom was the county council chief executive—Stalin himself—Mr. Alan “Sugar” Jones. “You are hired,” he said.

The new project director was Sue Barnes, who had excellent qualifications and substantial experience in local government. Sue Barnes is a constituent of mine, and she happens to be married to Mr. Colin Port, the chief constable of Avon and Somerset police. At best, that is an uncomfortable coincidence. Although Sue Barnes was not an officer in the council, she was given unusual delegated powers to conduct commercial negotiations.

According to Somerset county council’s auditors, Grant Thornton, there was no “conflict of interest” in the odd relationship. Let the phrase “conflict of interest” echo for a second or two, while I continue to be struck by the irony of Grant Thornton’s language. At the same time as auditing Somerset county council’s books, that well-known accountancy firm was also responsible for vetting the books of the Avon and Somerset police force. Furthermore, I think that Grant Thornton was working on behalf of the Audit Commission when Somerset county council was awarded its four stars. Do we think that is odd or what?

It is strange how times change. Grant Thornton is no longer hired by the Audit Commission. All current investigations into Somerset are being handled by the commission’s own experts. I am told that this time, they are going through the books of Somerset county with a fine-tooth comb. Yesterday’s four-star council could be presiding over a five-star scandal.

I received a letter today from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Salford (Hazel Blears) in which she raises the connection with Southwest One partnership. She said:

“The arrangements that Somerset County Council and Taunton and Deane Borough Council have made in entering into the joint venture partnership are primarily a matter for them: you should certainly direct any concerns you may have about the procurement process followed to the councils concerned, or to the District Auditor.”

That sums it up. Even the Government see that something is not right. I do not blame the police authority for signing the deal with Southwest One. Given the deal that the police were offered, they would have been absolute twits to turn it down, but I remain deeply suspicious about Southwest One itself. For example, how did IBM become the preferred partner in the first place?

Originally, British Telecom and Capita produced detailed pictures. At least, they are home-grown companies. Capita has more hands-on experience of local government work than almost any other organisation. What was the competitive tendering process? We do not know the precise ifs and buts because of the extraordinary degree of confidentiality surrounding the whole affair, but we know that after any competitive tendering, there has to be an evaluation—the safeguard whereby local government officials can assure themselves that everything they have done is hunky-dory. I know that the Minister understands what I am talking about.

There is a specialist team in Government which does nothing else but evaluate councils. It is known as the “four Ps”, which stands for public-private partnership programmes. As the Government know, those guys are the experts and, more to the point, their service is free. In the early stages of ISIS, the four Ps were called in, but when it came to vetting IBM, the Government
boffins got an extremely cold shoulder; they were fired.

Instead, the project director, Mrs. Colin Port—remember who she is?—recommended an entirely different evaluation process so, at an undisclosed cost to every taxpayer in Somerset, a private consultancy firm was hired. The consultancy company is called Maana, which is a Polynesian word that means “mature wisdom, with a hint of magic”—in other words, expensive eyewash.

The men from Maana previously worked for Suffolk county council. Guess what? Mrs. Port used to work there. It is always so much easier dealing with people we know, is it not? However, this time Maana was asked some searching questions about IBM’s business plans. The consultancy completed unedited reports that have never been made public, despite repeated requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Like so much of this appalling story, secrecy, underhandedness and deviousness rule.

However, there are some things that we know. We know that IBM was hired by the colleagues of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to run the computer agency at the Rural Payments Agency. I know farmers who still have slight concerns about that. I know that the IT system used by the Rural Payments Agency is similar to the one that IBM wants to use at Southwest One. We also know that it is a hugely costly system with a track record of going wonky and not working. Are the vast consultancy bills a cock-up? Every time one asks, one is told something different. The system is embarrassingly German. There again, what is a few million Deutschmarks here and there? As a matter of fact, there is nothing wrong with the main IT system currently used by Somerset county council, and there never has been. It has been saving money. It could easily be expanded. More important, however, it is 100 per cent. British.

As of now, a team of geeks are working their hearts out to make the software work. The software was originally written to serve the city of Bradford. Now it is being converted to the functions of Somerset. We were promised that ISIS and Southwest One would provide an improved service and real jobs. The House will be interested to know that the important work of producing a new computer system for the two councils and one for the police authority is being undertaken, not in Taunton, Bridgwater or Wales, but in India. That is also a secret—like all the details of the contract that were signed at 5 o’clock on a weekend morning between Somerset county council, Taunton Deane and IBM. We are not allowed to see the small print, or even the big print.

We are obliged to take a few face-value promises and guarantees of savings. We are expected to believe the unbelievable, swallow the lies, and to turn a blind eye to the growing suspicion of dodgy dealing and underhanded deals. My purpose is to open up this issue so that the Government can do something before it is too late. We appear to be lumbered with an arrangement that ties the hands of politicians and people for 10 years, but the details are totally secret. That is inequitable. I do not think that any of us would disagree that the Minister and his officials have a duty to ensure absolute probity in the spending of public money.

The Minister could demand to see the detailed arrangements for all partners in Southwest One. Such partnerships are high-risk for the public purse unless
there is a robust evaluation, monitoring and control system. Excessive secrecy inevitably erodes public confidence and inadequate democratic control washes it away altogether, which is why I want the Minister to consider this simple remedy: in future, such partnership arrangements should be subject to mandatory review by impartial organisations that represent, or report directly, to the Audit Commission and Parliament.

Southwest One is currently being investigated by the Audit Commission. I am respectfully seeking firm assurances that the recommendations of the audit will be fully implemented. The 10-year deal, which was pushed through by Stalinesque methods, is hazardous. The Lib Dems on the county council pathetically allowed it to happen—they did not even try to control the deal, and it could now tie the hands of all subsequent elected politicians regardless of their party.

I invite the Minister to investigate how one non-elected chief executive, Alan Jones, forced through such a mad, corrupt, barking scheme. Even Joseph Stalin did not go beyond five-year plans.

Couple of interesting items on Bristol East Labour MP Kerry McCarthy’s blog.

Firstly, to give you a further idea of the chaotic, leaderless, anti-democratic shambles which is the BRT plan for the Railway Path we get this from Kerry:

I have fired off letters to various people, asking for more info about the West of England Partnership’s plans for the Rapid Bus Link, but haven’t had any formal response yet.

That’s right. Despite having spent a small fortune on CONsultants, council officers’ salaries, feasibility studies, drawings, plans, meetings, Project Initiation Documents, strategies, briefing documents, presentations, reports and god knows what other crap, nobody involved is capable of explaining to a local MP whose constituency contains the path what the fuck is going on!

Our city safe in their hands, eh?

Elsewhere Kerry has managed to run into a little bit of trouble on a couple of blogs over her views on MPs expenses. She’s even had to remove the links to the blogs because they “used incredibly profane language and lots of school pupils look at my website, e.g. in school citizenship lessons.”

Sod that. Here at the Blogger we’ll take the risk that the kind of school pupil with the wherewithal to look beyond the hell of New Labour’s demented school curriculum, its citizenship propaganda and its set texts can deal with the word fuck when they see it. So the blogs in question are here and here.

Anyway, McCarthy ran into these problems after announcing:

I don’t know quite know what the solutions are [to the issue of MPs expenses]

This is pretty extraordinary. Surely someone who’s openly pitching for a job in government - where they would be, at the very least, partly responsible for vast sums of public money - must realise a system of financial accountability based solely on trust is actually a form of institutionalised corruption?

Would anyone put their money in a bank where your money was not properly recorded and you just had to trust the bank staff?

The solutions Kerry seems to find so complex are actually perfectly straightforward. MPs’ expenses simply need to be fully recorded, accounted and independently verified. What does Kerry think every other public organisation publishes audited accounts for? Fun?

But then given her government’s apparent policy of getting any major problems or anomalies with their public sector accounts smoothed out by their auditor over expensive lunches in the very best Westminster restaurants, it’s hard to tell what they think isn’t it?

The back of a bus and the council’s new chief exec.

A reader writes … (Made me laugh anyway)

Sir,

Have you noticed the resemblance between our new Bristol City Council Chief Executive, Jan Ormondroyd and the back end of a bus? Are they by any chance related? I think we should be told.

Indeed, would it not be possible to extract some added value fr om our £180,000 a year for Ms Ormondroyd by attaching some kind of guide rail to her and running her up the Railway Path at weekends?

I understand this to be what is referred to as a “win-win” situation in local authority circles.

Councillor Bradshaw would get his guided bus, the Railway Path would remain untouched and Ms Ormondroyd would have an excellent opportunity to perform a clear public service role each week.

Yours etc.

I C Taxwasting (Miss)
Westbury On Trym
Bristol.

And in further “Junket” Jan Ormondroyd news, we are presently unable to confirm the rumours that Jan will be working exclusively from an upmarket office block situated by the Thames in Southwark in order to easily access the city’s decision-makers …

And finally …

Following yesterday’s Evening Cancer report that mad scientists at UWE are developing tiny robots that can think for themselves, the paper ran a vox pop sensibly asking locals: “Do you have problem with robots that can think for themselves?”

Good question.

Jean from Longwell Green wisely pointed out, “there is a risk these intelligent robots could take people’s jobs.”

While Lizzie from Downend was concerned that “we run the risk of losing control - just like in all the films!”

Mark Packer from Kingswood meanwhile thinks the robots “may even do some of the jobs we don’t want to do.”

And the Bristol Blogger said, “I’d love to see Kerry McCarthy think for herself.”

Have a good weekend … And if you can’t be good be safe.

Fruitcake

A grudging hat-tip to James Barlow for this story, although I don’t see why we should when it’s obvious he’s just signed up to the same ‘They Work for You’ alert as we are.

Anyway, very strange outburst from Bristol West MP, Stephen Williams in the commons on Thursday when he introduced what he described as a petition:

[The Petition d]eclares that despite ongoing human rights violations and the UK government’s own export guidelines, the UK has consistently licensed exports to Israel for military equipment, thus providing material support for Israeli aggression, and sending a message of approval for its actions; further declares that the Israelis have declared Gaza a “hostile entity” within a “conflict short of war” and that the collective punishment of a civilian population is prohibited in international law.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to seek to end the siege on the Palestinians and to support Palestinian democracy by stopping arming Israel; reconsidering the UK’s policy of refusing to provide aid to the Palestinian Authority following Hamas’ election victory in January 2006 and pressing Israel to release all elected Palestinian parliamentarians, as well as other political prisoners; to censure the decision by the Israel cabinet to impose sanctions on supplies of electricity, fuel, and other basic goods and services to the civilian population of Gaza, to cease colluding with this act of State Terrorism against innocent people; and to work towards a just solution based on international law and an end to Israeli occupation.

Now Williams’ underlying demand that those useless Oxbridge tossers at the Foreign Office stop issuing export licenses to UK arms firms and start earning their money by engaging in some seriously robust diplomacy with Israel instead is not itself unreasonable.

But the language he’s using is utterly absurd and straight out of the weally wadical end of the Student Union. Do serious politicians really come out with frothing swivel-eyed nonsense about Israel engaging in “state terrorism” before condemning only the “Israeli aggression” in this two-sided conflict?

Where does he get this stuff from? Off the internet? All he needs are a few knowing references to ZIONISTS; an argument that Hamas are a peaceful social movement providing vital social services to desperate Palestinians; claim that blaming these innocent victims for attempting to kill Israeli civilians is nothing short of immoral and he could get a job on Comment is Free for life!

And as for complaining that Israel has declared Gaza “a hostile entity”, what are they supposed to call it? What would Williams prefer? A Bristol City Council-style press release describing the place as an up and coming Mediterranean family holiday destination?

Come to think of it that could make a good post on a quiet news day: Simon Caplan press releasing Peter Hammond’s response to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Can you imagine ..?

Bristol City Council has expressed a formal interest in submitting a bid for most improved Middle Eastern “Hostile Entity” status for the Gaza Strip.

The city council will be seeking funds in order to introduce a number of dedicated IDF equalities outreach workers into Gaza who will aim to engage with some of the ongoing community cohesion issues within the entity and introduce initiatives aimed at supporting the “conflict short of war”.

A further £250k will be set aside to support the creation of a new Legacy Commission to help deliver greater equality and social justice for people engaging in martyrdom operations and the city council’s ‘Islamists who make a difference’ Awards will also be improved, expanded and developed into an annual entity-wide celebration,

Cllr Peter Hammond said, “The hostile entity has provided an extraordinary outpouring of energy, passion and talent and was - ” (that’s enough city council PR. Ed.)

Er, sorry … Back to Williams … And the final idiocy of the MPs embarrassing rant? What he’s calling “the Petition of constituents of Bristol West” that he presented to Parliament is in fact no such thing. Williams has never publicly collected signatures for the petition and there’s no reference to it anywhere on his website either. What on earth is going on with the man?

Nurse! The screens …

Bristol West MP Stephen Williams has slammed the plan to turn the Bristol and Bath Railway Path into a guided bus route as “daft” and “quite loopy”.

Williams visited the path, which is now in his constituency, during the morning rush hour last Friday with members of the Campaign to Save the Railway Path and was described by them as “amazed to see how popular the path actually is.”

Williams later told campaigners on Facebook (membership required) : “I rode along the path early this morning with some campaigners. There were lots of riders on their way to school and work and also lots of pedestrians. Mixing the path with a bus won’t work!”

There’s a brief interview with Williams from the Railway Path posted above.

Williams joins the slightly more circumspect Kerry McCarthy, Labour MP for Bristol East, who gushed last week on her blog: “I’ve joined the Facebook group ‘I do not want the Bristol to Bath Cycle Path to turn into a Bus Lane!’”

What is this with local MPs and Facebook? Are announcements on this private and exclusive membership only section of the internet for students of constitutional significance now? Why don’t they post their thoughts where everyone can see them?

Back on her blog, McCarthy went on to say slightly more ambiguously: “I hope a solution can be found that will meet our public transport objectives and keep walkers and cyclists happy.”

McCarthy and Williams join Lib Dem councillors Abdul Malik and Muriel Cole, Green councillor Charlie Bolton and Tory councillor Lesley Alexander who have all now spoken out against the bus route.

Bolton has also organised a motion to reject the bus route on the Railway Path at the next Full Council Meeting on 1 April. As things stand, it appears Bolton and the Lib Dems will vote to reject the plans while the views of the Tories and Labour (who together hold a majority on the council) are still unclear.

The Save the Railway Path Campaign now has a website that is available on the ‘Bristol Sites’ sidebar.

Looks like New Labour’s TOP SECRET Robotics Division have been working overtime in their TOP SECRET lab deep in the bowels of the Houses of Parliament.

And we can report that the K3RR4 model that’s been so badly malfunctioning over the last few months is once again fully operational and back in service.

Yes, Labour’s Bristol East MP, K3RR4 McCarthy’s blog is back! After two long months of silence, systems manager, Dougie Alexander has allowed the K3RR4 three computations in just 24 hours.

However, despite the apparent rebuild and recalibration, the K3RR4 model still contains that annoying repetitive default mode that has to report to you all the time how hard it’s working; still has a tendency towards uttering the nonsensical - Barack Obama? Really resonates? - and it still comes with that unsightly and distinctive brown nose function as standard. Yesterday’s Spectator Coffee House blog reports:

Labour’s Kerry McCarthy asked a planted question [at PM's questions]: youth unemployment is down 55% in her constituency. Really? A brief check suggests those on benefits simply shifted into other categories. There were 10,610 on benefits in Bristol East in August 1999 (the earliest figures available) and 11,970 in May 2007 (the latest available). This is what she should be worried about.

There’s some sterling research on the role of First Group and the BRT scheme over on Bristol Indymedia by Cyclopath.

They point out the guided bus used in the sketch for the proposed BRT route on Bristol and Bath Railway Path is of a type developed by First Bus and is exclusive to them. So it looks like it’ll make little difference at this point if Bristol’s lame duck transport boss, Mark Bradshaw, throws them off the planning team as he claims he will.

Cyclopath also highlights the relationship between the Labour Party and their secret donor Moir Lockhead, chairman of First Group. Although it’s doubtful this news this will come as any surprise to long-suffering Bristolians perplexed at the state of their bus service.

There’s little to be optimistic about when it comes to the other firms involved in this multi-million pound wrecking project either.

Some of you may recognise the name Atkins, the huge multi-national civil engineering group the West of England Partnership have employed to develop their BRT. They were part of the doomed Metronet group that took on the public/private partnership deal forced on Transport for London by Gordon Brown to run the tube.

A deal they bailed out of last autumn - when the government refused to give them any more handouts - landing the tax payer with a £300m bill for their incompetence.

A recent House of Commons Transport Select Committee report into the expensive disaster even said talked directly of Metronet/Atkins’ “pathetic under-delivery” on the project and concluded:

“The government should bear the Metronet debacle in mind if and when its parent companies next come to bid for publicly-funded work.”

Not a piece of advice being heeded by the West of England Partnership, any local councillors or their well remunerated transport officers then.

Meanwhile the other civil engineering firm with their feet under the West of England Partnership’s table are Halcrow, the firm behind the massively over budget Channel Tunnel Rail Link. A project described by parliament as “dogged by wildly optimistic assumptions” while the benefits were “marginal”.

That’s quite a team our leaders have assembled for us …

It looks like cash-strapped Stephen Williams MP has come up with a new and imaginative way to squander taxpayers money.

How about paying to publish - in the local glossie for the yoof, Venue - a sartorially challenged picture of yourself hanging about in Clifton looking like yet another overpaid and underworked middle class local? Then, to cover the £500 cost, plonk a contact phone number on it and charge the whole thing to your brand new £10k MP’s communications allowance.

MPs were given this new allowance from April last year “for the purpose of assisting members with expenditure incurred wholly, exclusively and necessarily in communicating with the public on parliamentary business.”

Quite what Parliamentary business Williams thinks he’s urgently communicating by standing in front of the suspension bridge wearing Harris tweed and announcing “I’m on Youtube kidz” is not immediately obvious to the casual observer. But hey, what do we know?

Further news on Williams’ and his fellow MPs expenses also emerges. On top of the “paltry” £61k salary, the tax free £18k housing allowances and the receipt-free £250 a week cash mountain comes news of heavily subsidised parliamentary refreshments.

Just a week after revelations that the Frenchay and Southmead hospitals were spending just 50p on each patients’ meal, The Blogger’s reminded that hard done by MPs get subsidised meals and drinks at the House of Commons. A massive £5m a year is spent on this, equivalent to a 40% subsidy.

This works out at around £7k a year per MP or enough to buy 14,000 dinners at Frenchay hospital!

Thanks to ‘Poor Dear’ on the dazzlingly revamped Bristol Indymedia for this one.

With spectacularly bad timing, Bristol West MP, Stephen Williams has used his weekly web-based ‘Westminster Yawnfest’ (surely diary? ed.) to complain about his pay.

You see, the former corporate accountant has to struggle by on just £61,000 a year. Although this is topped up with expenses of just £18,000 a year to keep him in style when in London and another further £250 a week cash to buy his lunch so that mummy doesn’t have to make his sandwiches when she packs him off to parliament every morning.

“For weeks I’ve been irritated by newspaper headlines about MPs’ “snouts in the trough” or “‘gravy trains,’” he huffs to his readers just as the press reveal that many MPs do indeed have their snouts, their wives’ snouts, their kids’ snouts and, er, their mistresses snouts in a particularly expansive and unaccountable parliamentary trough.

Not a big enough trough for Williams’ snout though. He whines: “For the first time in my career it looked as though I was going to be able to vote on whether I got a particular percentage pay rise.”

As if it’s perfectly normal for public sector employees to choose how much of a pay rise they get. Does Williams live in the real world?

Former Bristol South MP Michael Cocks, even in the twilight of his long parliamentary career, still manages a small walk-on part in high Tory journalist Peter Oborne’s surprisingly impressive attack on contemporary parliamentary politics, The Triumph of the Political Class.

The - now - enobled ‘old Labour’ Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe makes his brief - and entirely characteristic appearance - in 2000 when New Labour were going all out to nobble the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Elizabeth Filkin, who was just a little too keen on doing her job properly.

Having already conducted thorough and effective investigations on our behalf in to Keith Vaz and his financial relations with the notorious Hinduja brothers; in to Gordon Brown’s wealthy benefactor, the Paymaster General Geoffery Robinson and in to John Reid’s unusual employment practices with regards to his son, Filkin’s looming investigation in to Tony Blair’s New Labour pin-up boy, Peter Mandelson and his bizarre home loan arrangements was considered a step too far for the government.

Initially - we’re told by Oborne - Mandelson himself attempted to prevent Filkin’s investigation by using his “charm”. When this inevitably failed, we then learn that Mandelson tried bullying tactics and dark threats to Filkin regarding his friends in the press. This in itself tells you an awful lot about the endemic private schoolboy culture of New Labour. Can you imagine a soppy little prick like Peter Mandelson bullying anyone in a genuine party of the working classes? He’d wouldn’t last five minutes before he was taken outside and given a well-deserved kicking.

However, whatever his tactics, Mandelson dismally failed to stop Filkin in her tracks as he had planned. So a number of particularly loyal and ambitious backbench Labour MPs were tasked with dealing with Filkin by briefing some of the more soft-headed and impressionable members of the parliamentary press lobby that Filkin was ‘a mad alcoholic’ among other things. Still Filkin bravely refused to budge.

What was to be done? It was time for New Labour - in a last desperate roll of the dice - to wheel out their parliamentary big guns. A call went up to the Lords for old school Labour Party enforcer Michael Cocks - described, not entirely inaccurately, by Oborne as “a Labour fixer who had been a notoriously thuggish chief whip in the dying days of the Jim Callaghan government” - to have a word with Filkin.

Alas. It’s not clear whether Cocks’ persuasive skills were on the wane or whether Filkin was exceptionally brave and focussed on her public service remit, but remarkably Filkin still refused to back down and her Mandelson investigation went ahead.

Filkin even managed to hang on to her post for a further two years - in the face of an extremely personal and brutal mauling in the press inspired by government sources - before eventually being forced out when her contract was not renewed in 2002.

While this will not probably go down as Cocks’s finest moment, at least he had what it takes to make it into a book about contemporary power politics. Unlike the current Bristol South MP, Dawn Primarolo. Despite being constantly touted as a member of Gordon Brown’s ‘inner circle’ and allegedly a leading New Labour light, Oborne makes no mention of Dawn at all. But then why would he bother with someone who’s little more than a glorified admin assistant for Gordon and his charmed circle of elite Oxbridge boys?

COMING SOON: Is Oborne a class struggle anarchist in disguise?